The most conservative estimates believed that a US invasion of Japan would cost 1 million lives, both American and Japanese. The Japanese government of the time was never going to be forced to surrender by conventional means; the brutal "island hopping" campaign in the Pacific gave a grim foretaste of what an invasion of mainland Japan would have been like.

We can't fairly judge people with the benefit of hindsight; we can only look at whether their actions were right in the context of the time. Faced as they were with an alternative that was even more horrendous than using the atomic bomb, and no other way out, I think the US was right to do what it did.

I think the scariest thing is that when they did the first test explosion. They weren't totally sure that the chain reaction would stop.

You cant stop sicence. the human condition is to learn and explore (i believe so, in a general fashion. not everyone is curious though)

The problem is politics combined with science. this means that grants were given to scientists studying nuclear fission because of the bomb potential, but not to nuculear fusion (which could solve all our energy problems with no icky radioactive side effects)

It's the same today, check.

Fusion is harder to do than fission, but the main reason the scientists dont get the money is that it doesnt have a "Market".

And as long as it's easier to burn fossle fules and bomb people, the fusionists (my word) will never get the money to adequatly fund this research.